Side By Side With Me
by Firelily10
Summary: The Mockingjay's new propaganda clip forces Haymitch to face the ghosts of his past. Inspired by "The Hanging Tree" song. One-shot


**Disclaimer: All rights go to Suzanne Collins. I do not own any characters, locations, events, etc. No copyright intended.**

**I'm new to writing HG fics, but "The Hanging Tree" song has been playing in my head all day and I had to write this. Please review!**

**Warning: gore, suggestions of suicide, and mild cussing. **

There is silence in the control room. It hangs over the occupants like a thick morning fog, its presence not quite as suffocating or as burdenous as Death. But like Death, Silence is an unyielding master today, for it does not allow any hushed whispers or nervous prayers to break its steady reign. And like a loyal people, the occupants comply...for now.

They are waiting. They have been waiting, it seems, for all their lives.

And now their patience is rewarded.

The first few notes ring out, shattering Silence and readying the birth of a new age.

"_Are you, are you, coming to the tree?"_

An image starts to register on the screens. Katniss Everdeen's face appears as a crisp picture of hope; her voice becoming the subtle beat to fuel of the drums of war.

The gatherers are too absorbed in the Mockingjay's song to notice one of their own quietly slip away from the room.

Three levels below them, a door slams and there is a crash from within one of the private quarters.

No one is there to hear his screams.

XxXxXx

_24 Years Ago_

If there had been any neighbors to hear all hell breaking loose inside his house, he was sure they would've had more than something to say about it. Luckily for him, there were none.

He stormed through the parlor and towards the front door, ignoring the angry shouts behind him. He had to get out of there before he did something he'd regret.

Something flew past his head, barely missing him, and crashed into the wall on his left. An involuntary shiver went up his spin as he quickly flew out the door, trying not to stare at the shards of glass from the shattered vase on the floor.

Damn. She wasn't just irritated with him anymore. She was pissed.

He had barely covered ten feet when he heard the front door burst open behind him, her footsteps crunching in the snow as she walked briskly towards him.

"You know what you are? You're selfish! You're a selfish son of a bitch!" she screamed.

Okay, now he was really scared. She never cursed. Not once had he heard a foul word leave her youthful, pale pink lips…until now. He hated himself for being the cause of it, but he knew he was right. It wasn't like it had been an awful idea. He'd given it a lot of thought the previous night and it seemed like the best option. Now that he thought about it, maybe it was their only option. Why she failed to see that was beyond him.

Something went flying, actually making contact with his head this time. He looked down and saw her shoe lying in the fresh blanket of snow.

He wasn't going to throw it at her, but felt his frustration burning when he turned to face her.

"Look at me!"

"I am" he growled. He hadn't meant to sound snappy, but he couldn't help it. She was being ridiculous.

Now she was marching up to him, her pale angel face now bright red, her cobalt blue eyes burning with a fire that he couldn't help but admire. It sometimes amazed him how the sweetest being on the face of the earth could transform into a fiery dragoness if the situation demanded it. And apparently, in her mind, the situation now demanded it.

"Listen to me" she said in a tone just short of menacing. "Help me understand this one thing. What made you possibly think that making us fugitives would be a good idea?"

"It would've kept us safe."

"Safe? Safe? Haymitch do you even hear yourself?" She seemed to be on the verge of tears now, her rage slowly evolving into distraught. "They'd find us. We wouldn't last half a day out there! They'd hunt us down and…and…did you ever think of what they'd do to us? To your mother, to Aiden, to me? Are you-"

He took her by the shoulders as gentley as he could, rubbing circles into her skin with his thumb. He felt her body start to relax to his touch."We're not safe here" he insisted, his voice soft bit firm.

"I don't understand." Her voice had fallen into a low whisper. "The Games are over Haymitch. You're safe. We're all safe here. They promised to leave you alone now."

"And you believe them?" He didn't want to sound harsh, but sometimes her naïve spirit didn't let her see the cruelness of the world. He had to make her understand.

"Listen to me" he said slowly, brushing a few strands of her golden locks out of her eyes. "They weren't exactly happy with me after the Games. The forcefield…it was never supposed to be a weapon. They think I've made them look weak. They can say anything they want about our safety, but they're gonna come. And it's not just gonna be for me."

"Haymitch?" She was trying so hard not to cry, but he could see something glistening in her blue Seam eyes.

"I'm not just gonna sit by and let them take you from me. If we go now, we have a chance at making it. Your family can come too. We-"

"We can live the rest of our lives in fear." She said this quietly but there was strength in her words. "Is that what you want for us? To always be afraid that someone's gonna find us in the night, to sleep with one eye open? We can sleep safely here. We have food and warm beds and a roof over our heads. That's more than what either of us had before. Don't you see? It's a better life now. For us, for both our families. Haven't you seen Aiden lately? He's smiling, actually smiling now. He doesn't have nightmares anymore. Most days he's asleep before I'm halfway through his lullaby."

Haymitch smiled at the thought of his little brother nodding his head as she sang him to sleep. He wondered if one day she'd be doing that to their own children.

"Come on Haymitch" she whispered, running a slender hand through his mess of blonde hair. "You don't have to be scared anymore. They can't touch us here. We won't let them."

He did not resist as she pulled him into her embrace. He buried his face into her soft, golden hair, taking in her scent. She smelled of springtime, even in the winter, of freshly picked lavender and April showers. Her lips whispered to him through his hair, touching his skin ever so slightly.

"It's you and me Hay…you and me."

Despite the warning in his gut, he believed her. Maybe it was her voice that soothed his fears or the tenderness of her touch, but she'd convinced him for now.

"Alright then" he said, kissing the tip of her nose, her chin, and finally her lips.

"No more running away talk, okay?"

"No more" he agreed. "I'll be back" he said, turning away. "Gotta go see Sae. Owe her some money for the stew Aiden stole last week."

"Just promise you'll come back" she said with a grin. "Don't go runnin' off with some Capitol girl now."

"Don't get your hopes up Sunshine" he replied. He picked up her shoe and tossed back to her. "Sorry but you're stuck with me now."

He heard her laugh before he turned away from her and began to walk towards the gate of Victors' Village. He could see his mother and Aiden just coming in with packages of freshly baked bread from Mellark's bakery filling their arms.

"Where you off to?" his mother asked, glancing over at the snow white girl waving him goodbye.

"Greasy Sae is expecting some compensation for some hotshot little thief" he said, winking down at a ten year old Aiden, who tried to hide a mischievous grin.

"As long as you're back in time for supper. Claire's staying late to help me cook and I think she's got something special planned."

"I'll be back" he promised, placing a kiss on his mother's temple. He rubbed Aiden's tuft of copper hair before making his towards town, wondering how he ever got a girl as precious as Claire Fairburn to love someone as broken as him.

XxXxXx

The sun was just starting to set when he returned to the Victors' Village, sending radiant hues of red, orange, and yellow melting into the fading baby blue.

He had been fortunate enough to find some primroses clinging to life in a meadow-like area by one of the outer fences and now had a proper bouquet of them clenched in his hands. Claire liked all manners of flowers, but he knew she adored primroses. She'd even made a comment a few nights ago about Primrose being a pretty name for a little girl. He'd thought that it had be an excellent choice, considering all the other proposals she'd made whenever they'd discussed children. He called her choices "creative" when his mother had asked him about it. He hadn't wanted to hurt Claire's feelings in case word got back around to her, but seriously, who wanted to name their kid Katniss? Wasn't that some kind of potato? He wondered if naming kids after plants was something unique to Claire or if it was some kind of trend running through the women of District 12. He didn't want to think about it much. Kids seemed like something far away, if they ever happened.

His house came into view.

The door had been torn off the hinges.

XxXxXx

The sixteen year old bolted towards his house, the primroses still clutched in his hands.

He made an immediate left upon entering the house, straight to the kitchen. The kitchen knife was lying abandoned on the counter amidst partially chopped vegetables, covered in what he knew wasn't tomato juice. His eyes quickly scanned the kitchen for signs of a struggle. The thick, red substance was smeared all over the place. He nearly slipped in it as he approached the dining room.

Acidic bile burned his throat and sloshed onto the hardwood floor as he stared at the disfigured body strewn across the dining table. Entrails spilled onto the floor, limbs tied fast to the wood by thick, costly rope, her head hung limp over the table's edge…his mother.

Aiden and Claire were nowhere to be seen.

Upstairs. Aiden liked to play upstairs with her before dinner.

He turned his back on the gruesome kitchen scene and sprinted up the stairs.

"AIDEN!"

All seemed normal when he first charged into his younger brother's bedroom. The child seemed to be fast asleep, eyes closed and curled up in his own warm bed. He felt a wave of relief wash over him. Maybe they hadn't found him. Maybe he had slept through the whole thing.

Haymitch sat down next to his brother and rubbed a hand through his brown mop of hair. It came back caked with blood. Aiden Abernathy was not sleeping.

This couldn't be happening. This wasn't real.

Claire. Claire was still alive. She had to be.

All the possibilities started streaming through his mind. She could've gone home to grab something. There might've been a family emergency. Maybe she'd found a place to hide from them. Claire was smart enough for that, right?

He carefully checked every room of the second story and did not proceed to search the ground floor until he was certain that she was not cramped up in some cupboard somewhere.

He rechecked the kitchen, not allowing his eyes to return to his mother's mutilated form. There was no sign of Claire.

The closets were empty. She was not in the yard. All that was left was the parlor.

"Claire?" he called as he edged his way into the room. There was no reply.

His eyes were closed when he entered the room.

_Open your eyes you coward._

He felt the primroses fall from his hand.

Claire was beautiful, dressed in a white lace dress too expensive to have come from District 12. Capitol made, he realized. White roses had been interwoven through her braided blonde hair. One rose, which he assumed she had been holding, had fallen from her hands to the floor below.

Had she not been hanging from the ceiling fan, she would've made a beautiful bride.

XxXxXx

Haymitch Abernathy did not sing. It just wasn't like him. But he sang that day as he prepared a hangman's noose for himself and found a chair to stack onto the coffee table, allowing him to touch the fan.

At first he had not been able to recall the exact words, but memories of Claire lulling Aiden to sleep brought the words back to him.

He sang to Claire as he stood on his chair by her side.

"Are you, are you, coming to the tree? Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free."

He thought about their fight. He could've stopped all this. If he'd just forced her to go, they would've been miles from here by now…alive.

He sang the next few verses in her ear, holding one of her ice cold hands in his. The roses smelled like blood, he thought.

"Are you, are you, coming to the tree?"

He fitted the noose around his neck.

"Wear a necklace of hope, side by side with me."

He tightened it.

"Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be if we met at midnight in the hanging tree."

Nothing happened. He did not kick the hair from under him. He did not jump.

He stared at the note sitting on the floor. He hadn't noticed it before.

_A victor without a mentor becomes repeated history. _

_-S_

Haymitch stared at it. He knew what it meant. He hadn't had a mentor going into his own games. If he had, maybe he would've known better than to try to use the forcefield. His lack of knowledge had led to his demise. This would happen to every other potential victor if they didn't have someone to teach them. They needed a mentor or their families would end up just like his…just like Claire.

Haymitch told himself he didn't care. He wanted to be with his family, with his girl. But the note refused to leave his sight.

History would repeat itself.

The thought of escorting kids to their deaths year after year was unbearable…the thought of the undertaker dragging their families' bodies from their homes was even more so.

Haymitch untied himself, clambered down from the chair, and picked up the little white card.

"You'll burn for this" he whispered before tossing it into the ash filled fireplace.

Somehow, he knew Snow had been listening.

XxXxXx

The boy sprinkled more alcohol on the growing fire. The smell of burning corpses made him gag as he watched the column of smoke disappear into the winter sky.

Burning. Everything was burning. That seemed to be his entire existence.

He looked hesitantly at the bottle of whiskey in his hand. He had bought dozens of crates of alcohol to feed the fire. There were still at least twenty bottles still sitting in their boxes, unused.

He took a tip. It burned his insides like the fire in front of him. He took another sip. Then another. And another.

The first bottle was gone. He tossed it into the fire and snatched another one, gulping down the bitter liquid greedily. The burning sensation consumed him. He hated it. He loved it. He had no one left to love.

The fire died some time later but its keeper had abandoned it long ago. He was too busy drowning himself in liquor in his new prison.

If he'd had neighbors, he was sure that they would've heard him singing out in drunken slurs that night, swearing to string up the man who murdered three. But unfortunately for him, there were none.

XxXxXx

_Present Time_

Katniss did not notice her mentor's absence until halfway through the video. She quietly excused herself and slipped out of the room.

She heard his screams before she even reached his room.

"Haymitch? Haymitch! Open up!" she yelled, banging on his door with her fist. She didn't even bother to cover up the worry in her voice.

"Haymitch it's just me!"

"Come back some other time Sweetheart."

Katniss frowned. It sounded like he'd been…crying. She had to be wrong. Haymitch didn't cry. He snapped, he yelled, he teased, but he did not cry.

"Just let me in" she said, softening her tone significantly.

To her surprise, the door opened.

The room was a mess, and not the typical Haymitch kind of mess. It looked like someone had turned the whole place over looking for something.

A drink. He'd been looking for a drink.

But she could tell by the look on his face that this was more than withdrawal symptoms.

"Don't sing."

She frowned at him.

"I wasn't going to."

"Good."

She waited for him to offer up some kind of explanation but he did no such thing. He just sat there, in the middle of the room, staring blankly at the wall.

"I can ask Coin for some liquor if you want. Prohibition or not, I'm sure they've got some around here somewhere."

"Is Prim safe?"

Where did that come from?

"What?"

"Your sister, is she okay?"

"Yah why? Did something happen?"

He didn't say anything.

Katniss rose to her feet angrily.

"Haymitch if something happened to her you better tell me right now or-"

"Nothing happened to _her_."

Katniss eyed him wearily. What game was he playing?

She tapped her foot impatiently. No explanation came.

"Fine. Don't tell me" she said haughtily. She was halfway through the door when he spoke.

"Katniss?"

He never used her name.

"Yes?"

"We're gonna end all this. We're gonna end this thing. End him."

Him meaning Snow, she supposed.

"Yah, yah we are. Snow won't get away with any of this." She paused for a moment before continuing. "He'll burn for this."

He managed to give her his usual smirk and she felt somewhat relieved. She left without another word.

He'd thought about telling her, telling her everything. But she didn't need to be brought down right now. She needed confidence, not fear. He'd tell her one day, but not today.

Today he needed to be strong and standing by her side for her. She was the Mockingjay. And she was writing a new history for all of them.


End file.
